Pieces
by Sifl-senpai
Summary: Yugi dropped his cards and reached out for the box, transfixed. "Grandpa," he said. "Grandpa, what is this?" Back then, Yuugi's hair was plain black, but the gold of the box illuminated the front with amber highlights as he pried it open with anxious fingers. (Snapshots of a reimagined, introspective Yugioh.)


Yuugi met Anzu when he started kindergarten, but they had never actually spoken until one morning about a month into the school year. Summer was emerging out of spring, but wasn't quite ready to separate from its cocoon all the way.

They'd stood at a crosswalk in identical yellow hats, and she'd sneezed in reaction to a fluttering breeze tickling the back of her neck.

Yuugi tried to say "gesundheit" like his father always did on those rare occasions he wasn't traveling abroad, but his kindergarten mouth pronounced the word about as well as you might expect.

Anzu froze right then and there like a deer in headlights.

"Did you say something?" she asked.

Yuugi blinked. "I said, uh," he tried again, and this time it was closer, "ge-shun-doo-hai-to."

"Um." Anzu smiled, uncomprehending. "What?"

"It's German," explained Yuugi. "My dad says you should say it when somebody sneezes."

"Oh." Anzu nodded. "Ge-shun-uh?"

Yuugi nodded and started the word again, but then the breeze snuck up on him and he sneezed right in the middle of it. "Ge-shu-choo!"

"Ge-shu-choo!" Anzu mimicked, and then ogled Yuugi with utter sincerity. "There! Just like that! I said it because you sneezed!"

The two of them stared at one another in total bafflement, and then burst out laughing. The crossing guard had to ease them back into the real world with her whistle and a steady, white-gloved hand.

"I like you," Anzu said once they settled down. "Hold my hand as we cross the street." They were the same size, but Anzu's larger-than-life protective personality was just as definitive then as it was now.

But anyways, she held out her hand, and Yuugi took it.

"I like you, too," he said. And then, "Do you like games?"

"What kind of games?" Anzu asked.

"All kinds of games," said Yuugi. "Any kind of game there is. Card games, tabletop games, puzzle games, arcade games, shogi, go, Capumon."

Anzu nodded. "My grandpa makes me play go with him sometimes. I like hide-and-go-seek tag." She frowned. "And I like the pretty cards for hanafuda, but I always lose."

Yuugi's eyes lit up. "Grandpa has lots of hanafuda cards," he said. "I can show you, after school. I can show them all to you. And we can play koi-koi."

"Ok," said Anzu.

She was Yuugi's first friend.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Anzu lost every single game of hanafuda they played. She did her best not to show it, but she went home from the Kame Game Shop red-cheeked and on the verge of tears. Yuugi's grandfather, Sugoroku Mutoh, went with her so her parents wouldn't worry about her getting lost.

Back at the Mutoh apartment above the game shop, Sugoroku found Yuugi sitting in his room in a circle of cards scattered about like evidence at a crime scene. He gathered them up one by one and assembled them like one might assemble the pieces to a puzzle.

"Yuugi," said Sugoroku, "Are you alright?"

Yugi nodded, and then, after a pause, shook his head no. His usual smile was gone.

"Why did she leave like that?" he asked his grandfather. "I don't get it."

Sugoroku clenched his fists. This was his grandson, someone he'd known since their birth, but explaining things like this always made him nervous for reasons he couldn't explain.

Yuugi was different. He understood things differently, and he thought about people differently, too. He expressed himself differently. And people tended to treat other people who were different… differently.

Sugoroku dreaded the moment Yuugi figured that out, too, even though he knew it was fast approaching.

"Not everyone," Sugoroku licked his lips, "is as good at games as you are, or likes them as much as you do."

Yuugi blinked. His expression didn't change very much, but the gears in his head were definitely spinning. "Anzu doesn't like games? But she said we could play koi-koi."

"No, Yuugi, that's not what I mean."

Yuugi gathered the cards with a faster hand, and then, when he exhausted that task, began to shuffle them with a practiced anxiousness. It was one of the things he did whenever he was stressed. Once, he told Suguroku that he liked the feeling of the cards under his hands, or dice clattering in his palms, or Rubix cubes turning every which way even if he wasn't trying to solve them.

"I don't know what I did wrong, Grandpa," he said to Sugoroku. His huge eyes were wide. "I was just playing the game the way it was s'posed to be played."

Sugoroku sat down on Yuugi's green bedsheets and put his hands on his shoulders.

"I know, I know," he said. "You were. You were playing wonderfully. But you've been playing these games all your life, and she's just learning," said Sugoroku. "She's not used to losing all the time. She's barely had the chance to understand how to play."

"But Grandpa," said Yuugi, "I beat you plenty of times at games you played all your life, and you never cried!"

He shuffled the cards even faster beneath a disturbingly even expression.

Sugoroku reached out to rub gentle circles on his grandson's shoulders.

"Now, now, Yuugi. I'm an old man! I've had lots of time to learn how to lose, too. That's a skill that's a little bit harder to learn."

Yuugi nodded, but then stopped. "Why? I lose, too. But sometimes you lose games."

Sugoroku raised his eyebrows. "You don't lose very much anymore," he said. "People may not always want to play with you because of that."

Yuugi's placid expression wavered. His hands deftly arranged and rearranged the cards in his hands like his life depended on it.

"So she's not going to play with me, ever?"

"I don't know about that, Yuugi," said Suguroku, "but she is very upset."

"Does she hate me?" Yuugi's little face broke out in tears. "I don't want her to hate me!"

"No, no, I don't think she hates you, Yuugi. She's just upset. It's not easy to play against someone who wins all the time, you know, especially when you aren't used to it."

Yuugi leaned against his grandfather's legs, cards still in hand. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry!"

"Shh," said Sugoroku as he rubbed small circles into his grandson's back. "It's alright. You've not done anything wrong. You'll see her tomorrow and talk to her about it. Okay?"

Yuugi hiccuped, shuffled the deck, and nodded.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Anzu showed up the next day at the crosswalk and beat Yuugi to the punch.

She pulled out a sticker sheet from her bag and stuck one shaped like a smiley-face onto the back of Yuugi's hand before he could say anything.

"You won all the games yesterday," she said. "You get a prize."

"Oh," said Yuugi.

"Let's play jump rope today," she said.

"I'm not any good at jump rope," said Yuugi.

Anzu grinned, and put a sticker on her own hand. "Good. I'll win today, and then you can win tomorrow at koi-koi." She peeled off another sticker and gave it to Yuugi.

Yuugi, at a loss, took the sticker and put it on the back of his other hand. "What about tomorrow we play dominoes instead of koi-koi?"

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

One day in middle school, Yuugi came home with a black eye and Anzu at his side.

Suguroku was out from behind his counter and on his knees in front of his grandson before he could even blinked. "Yuugi! What happened?"

"This boy," spat Anzu, "this boy came up and made Yuugi play this game he had with him because he was jealous that Yuugi has all these games, and then got mad when Yuugi won, and punched him." Anzu held up her fist. "So I kicked him between his legs!"

Sugoroku found himself almost laughing, despite himself. "I see that the issue must have resolved itself, then."

"H-he," said Yuugi, "he took the game. He said he wanted to borrow it. Grandpa, I'm sorry. I should have told him no, because it was yours and I was borrowing it, but I didn't. I'm sorry."

"He's not borrowing it, though!" said Anzu. "He was just saying that. He took it! That Jonouchi!"

Sugoroku held out his hands. "It's just a game, Yuugi. We have more." He gestured to the entire shop around them, stuffed wall-to-wall with every game imaginable. "It's alright. You'll just have to be more careful about showing them to people, that's all."

Anzu stomped her feet and leaned down over him. Their difference in height was already striking, even at this age. Sugoroku silently apologized to his grandson for saddling him with the Mutoh curse of stubby little legs.

"You should put your fist right in his face next time, Yuugi!" said Anzu.

Yuugi looked like he'd rather swallow a cage full of live hornets than do that.

"Now, now," said Sugoroku, leading the children to the kitchen. "No need to be so hasty. Let's have some tea, shall we?"

Anzu grumbled, but she obediently followed when Yuugi did. And, with all of them beneath a kotatsu and over a hot kettle of tea, Sugoroku eventually mollified Anzu's righteous fury and sent her home with gratitude and the promise that everything would be alright.

Yuugi, however, was a little more difficult to calm. He'd been stimming with a deck of cards in his hands before Sugoroku had even poured Anzu the first cup of tea, and had gotten progressively faster over the entire night.

"Yuugi," began Sugoroku.

"Jonouchi is also my friend," said Yuugi. "I'm not gonna punch him. I don't like that he and Anzu don't get along."

"Yuugi, are you sure that Jonouchi isn't like Anzu says and is just picking on—?"

"Jonouchi is my friend," repeated Yuugi, firmly.

A card in Yuugi's hands landed crooked within the rest of the deck. It had a dog-eared corner. Yuugi pushed the corner down and adjusted it straight in the stack, so that the deck was even and together in a neat rectangle.

Jonouchi was like that card. Yuugi would do anything to keep him in order in his mind, even if it was dog-eared and made for trouble, and anyone with any sense for gambling could pick it out in an instant.

And Sugoroku wasn't just any washed-up old gambler; he was Yuugi's grandfather. Jonouchi was not actually Yuugi's friend, period. But it was useless to argue with him when he got like this, so Sugoroku didn't bother calling the bluff.

"I'm sorry I didn't bring your game back," Yuugi said.

Sugoroku shook his head. "Yuugi, it's alright."

"I'm not good to trust with important things. I'm not. I'm too weak to take care of them."

"That's not true. Who told you that?" Sugoroku leaned over the kotatsu. "Yuugi, who told you that?"

"I'm sorry," said Yuugi. "I understand if you'll never trust me again. I'm so sorry."

In a moment of rare impulsiveness, Sugoroku stood up and shuffled through the kitchen, down the stairs, and to the safe in the back of his game shop. He had the door open in an instant and removed a box from the very back with a determined frown.

When he returned to Yuugi and presented the Millenium Puzzle to him without so much as a word, the cryptic hieroglyphs and suspiciously untarnished gold coating the box looked almost innocuous, even with the unblinking eye of Ra peering directly into Yuugi's soul. The box stood on four feet like it was poised to leap at Yuugi, and gleamed like the teeth of a grinning animal.

"This is the most precious and important thing I have, besides you and your parents," said Sugoroku. "I'm giving it to you, because I'm too old to take care of it. So don't tell me I can't trust you. Don't tell me that. It isn't true, and I know it."

Yugi dropped his cards and reached out for the box, transfixed. "Grandpa," he said. "Grandpa, what is this?" Back then, Yuugi's hair was plain black, but the gold of the box illuminated the front with amber highlights as he pried it open with anxious fingers. "Where did you find this?"

"Egypt," said Sugoroku, "after a long story you don't want to know."

Yugi's huge eyes zeroed in on him. "Tell me," he said.

"I don't know. Can I trust you to handle it?"

Yuugi leaned forwards and pulled the open box to his chest. "Tell me."

Sugoroku grinned.


End file.
